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There is something wrong with Hawaii’s education system.

I am 16 and, in every sense of the phrase, a fresh pair of eyes for Hawaii. I have been homeschooled and gone to a public school, a charter school, and a private school. I have been the star student and the child with an F on their paper.

I have been in systems, running them, and an outside observer. Therefore, I have a keen sense of what works and what does not.

Hawaii’s education system is broken. We have chronic absenteeism, astounding dropout rates, and abysmal test scores.

Why? Hawaii is the only state that is still running under a centralized education system.

This means that Hawaii’s state government controls the education system instead of districts or individual schools. Every public school must follow the same set of state guidelines and regulations, regardless of differences between them.

The problems that this leads to is little flexibility and dissatisfaction. A survey conducted by the American Institutes for Research on principals in Hawaii and discussed in an article by The Hawaii Independent reports that “70% said that they did not have sufficient flexibility in introducing new approaches at their schools, or in trying new instructional programming.”

Centralization also means that children are bombarded with a slew of tests to make sure they are “staying on track.” Teachers as well are hurt from centralization, as there is no competition or creative innovation and they find themselves teaching to the test.

Before I show why decentralization is superior, let me answer a common concern: How will we make sure everyone is learning the same thing?

Many people find this important as it is a way to compare children and schools to figure out what is going well and what can be done better.

However, this circles back around to “teaching to the test” because, if someone wants to perform well according to a certain metric, that is all they focus on, not actual learning.

Decentralized schools have higher student achievement. Eunice Heredia-Ortiz, a researcher from Georgia State University states that, “decentralization in education significantly improves repetition rates, dropout rates, completion rates and test scores.”

Another such paper, by The Decentralization Thematic Team in the Journal of Education, showed that decentralized systems help improve attitudes about the government as “the process of decentralization can substantially improve efficiency, transparency, accountability, and responsiveness of service provision compared with centralized systems.”

Decentralized schools have higher student achievement.

Centralization cannot make sure every child will succeed and ultimately hinders everyone. The No Student Left Behind Act and Common Core are examples of this.

According to Ben Scafidi, a professor at Kennesaw University, “No Child Left Behind has led many states to dumb down learning standards and inflate their reported graduation statistics to purportedly meet NCLB’s academic goals. But fixes to the latter have led some states to make it easier for students to obtain a high school diploma, inflating how prepared they really are for college and/or careers.”

Children who would have needed to repeat grades 50 years ago are now being thrust out into the world, false Hercules who think they are prepared for the lion’s den.

Studies Proposed

This last Hawaii legislative session, there were two resolutions that could have served as a first step towards fixing this problem. Both proposed a study be conducted on Hawaii’s education system to see if a centralized approach is working and if not, how we could switch to a different system.

and called for a study to examine the effectiveness of Hawaii’s single, statewide school system as well as the feasibility of conversion to an alternate system. While the measures did not pass, they could be reintroduced in the new session that opens in January.

The study could involve public meetings, with input and revisions from the public, and a plan proposed for how this shift of power from the top of the government to the bottom will occur, in order to create a decentralized system. The money for the study could come from taking a little bit of money away from other projects handled by the Senate Committee on Education.

The reason the bills died in committee is because of lack of participation and testimony from the public — we need to make sure that does not happen again.

I am begging the government to reintroduce the joint bills and support them. I am begging the public of Hawaii to call, email, or go and bang on the door of the legislators who would be able to make this happen: Bennette E. Misalucha, Justin H. Woodson, Jeanne Kapela, Michelle N. Kidani, Donna Mercado Kim, Donovan M. Dela Cruz and Gilbert S. C. Keith-Agaran.

Tell them that this is the future of over 290,000 children in Hawaii.

Tell them that the very system that is supposed to be preparing those children for the future is failing them.

Tell them that you need to see change.